Email a copy of "‘Human Wrongs Council’ – Israel Ambassador to UN on Schabas Appointment to Gaza Commission" to a friend

Members of the Palestinian delegation at the United Nations General Assembly celebrate Nov. 29 upon the vote to upgrade Palestinian status to a non-member observer state Nov. 29. Photo: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas.

Ambassador Ron Prosor, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, on Tuesday said “the United Nations Human Rights Council set a new record for anti-Israel bias and proved once again, that it would be better named the ‘Human Wrongs Council'” because of its “complete travesty of justice” by inviting Professor William Schabas, “one of the most outspoken critics of Israel to serve as its judge and jury.”

“The selection of William Schabas to chair the Gaza commission of inquiry is an utter farce,” Prosor said. “The only inquiry taking place should be an inquiry into how a vehemently anti-Israel chair was selected to lead a UN commission investigating Israel.”

As Schabas, who now writes books exclusively about prosecuting genocide in the international arena, was named to the chair the panel, Doudou DiÃ¨ne, a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, was named as a representative along with Amal Alamuddin, a Lebanese-British lawyer better known as the fiancee of Hollywood actor George Clooney, though she declined the nomination.

Jewish organizations also condemned the creation of the commission and its appointments. The Anti-Defamation League called the panel “a farce” with the outcome “all-but preordained.”

“Here we go again,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “As if on cue, the United Nations Human Rights Council has appointed a so-called ‘independent’ panel to investigate Israel’s conduct in the recent conflict in Gaza, with the outcome all-but preordained. This farce began with an illegitimate Council resolution and will predictably end with an illegitimate panel investigation and report, entirely biased against Israel, which places the blame squarely on Israel for ‘war crimes’ and other violations of international law and pays no attention to the terrorism of Hamas.”

In his last full day in office, former Israeli President Shimon Peres also objected to the creation of the commission in a joint press conference with the UN Secretary-General, who he called out for allowing UN-run schools in Gaza to be used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as rocket depots and launchpads.

“We have seen this theater of the absurd before,” Foxman said. “The inquiry will be stacked against Israel through the appointment of individuals with anti-Israel bona fides like Professor William Schabas. Israel, understandably, will refuse to cooperate. And, finally, a harsh, biased and fundamentally flawed report will be issued, providing fodder to those who have already found Israel guilty on all counts and handing Hamas a phony victory in the court of public opinion.”

“Schabas has made comments critical of Israel’s leadership in the past, and participated in the 2012 Russell Tribunal on Palestine, a conference in which Israel is put on trial, with its guilt on war crimes fully presumed,” Foxman said. “DiÃ¨ne has served as U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance from 2002 to 2008 and as the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in CÃ´te d’Ivoire from 2011 to 2014.”

B’nai B’rith International said “the commission itself illegitimate as it was born of a UNHRC resolution that stridently excoriated Israel in advance of the ‘inquiry’ it launched and didn’t so much as mention Hamas by name. It was specifically designed to scrutinize not years of cross-border terrorist attacks against Israelis, but”Ž rather Israel’s defensive response to them. Any suggestion that there is equivalence between terrorism and a state defending its civilians from that threat is both outrageous and unacceptable.”

“Naming individuals with prior, public positions harshly critical of Israeli policy reinforces strong anticipation that the Gaza probe’s conclusions are foregone,” B’nai B’rith said. “Schabas, for example, was quoted in 2013 as saying, ‘my favorite would be [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu within the dock of the International Criminal Court.'”

“Alamuddin—who is engaged to actor George Clooney—has now said she is unavailable to sit on the UNHRC commission. Nonetheless, she specified in a statement that she was ‘horrified’ by what she called the ‘crimes’ committed in the ‘occupied Gaza Strip.’ Gaza, however, saw all Israeli military personnel and civilians depart in 2005, and it has been the origin of relentless, criminal violence against the civilians of Israel by Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas. Her intended appointment reveals not only the inherent bias of the UNHRC commission and its dispatchers, but also a deplorable attempt to garner publicity for yet another exercise in anti-Israel bias.”

Israel’s Prosor brought the issue back to the wider violation of human rights around the world, and how rather than protecting people, the UNHRC has became a tool for the violators. He said “the exploitation of the UNHRC by some of the world’s worst human rights abusers is a grave misfortune for the millions of oppressed people around the world. While the Council is singularly focused on its anti-Israeli agenda, the world’s most murderous tyrants continue brutalizing their people.”

He called on the UN Secretary-General to “to publicly denounce the appointment of Mr. Schabas” as his selection “is a disgraceful stain on the values that the UN claims to stand for.”

Share this Story:

Let your voice be heard!

Can the word bias be slotted into antisemitism? I think it probably has been as is ‘i’slamic ‘s’state! Twice?? antISemitISm!!

Cynthia

The days of the United Nations is over, there is nothing in it but the hate anyway. Thank you Mr. Rockefeller for giving them a building to use, it’s time to sell it at auction and have the United Nations move next to the Hague where it belongs. Time for the civilized nations to leave and start anew, since only hate filed backwards nations occupy it at this time. By By UN

Nadia

Shame UN Shame. And do you even see the irony of creating a blatantly biased group to pass judgement on a nation they have openly declared their bitter bias towards. What a pathetic tragedy! Shame UN Shame.

Matthew

Maybe Israel should form its own commission with the goal of investigating the UN’s role in encouraging racism around the world, supporting terrorism and violence, advocating for genocide, and in general undermining the rule of international law.

This commission should mirror what the UN’s panel is doing, calling only for witnesses whose views conform to the desired outcome. It should state as publicly as possible that it is paralleling what the UN’s body is doing.

The Israeli Commission should be a recognizable travesty, designed to be “in the face” of those who have undermined the credibility of the UN.

The abusers of the UN have no shame, but they may understand that they are being ridiculed.

The UNHRC is the greatest disgrace to this planet , it ignores the human rights of all the real sufferers ,the enslaved millions in Africa , the billions of down trodden and exploited in Asia.
Totally ignores the greatest violators the Arab States were the women ,homosexuals ,children or animals have no rights at all. Over 140 children died digging the tunnels under Gaza ,just over 80.000 women children and the elderly died from barrel bombs in Syria . Over 260 executed publicly in Iran for alleged homosexual acts not to mention the thousands in other Arab States .
The UN’s HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION IS STACKED WITH THE WORST VIOLATORS .
SHAME ON THE UN. SHAME ON THE LEADERS OF THE WESTERN WORLD.for allowing the
PALESTINIANS ARABS TO HIJACK AN UN INSTITUTION FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA AGENTA AGAINST THE ONLY FREE DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDLE EAST.

george

I can’t believe it. There is no justice in this miserable world. Never was, never will be!

Fred

The Arab UN has become exclusive Arab dominated as for the gutless members it more of the same bias it has been dishing out. Justice is not just blind it has taken a run into fantasy . Why hold a trial as Israel had no right to defend itself , therefore it is guilty. The old anti Semitic cliché is being revived. hat a revolting world we live in where perversity of mind is becoming a virtue.

Here we go again placing people that have hidden agendas prior to looking at all the evidence. Israel just like any other country, who would border another country and they’re being attack by missiles coming into there land, would take proper defense to protect there people. I wonder if it were different if it was happening from New Jersey into New York City, then where would be the probable cause then. The odds are stack against a tiny country Israel and they will never get a fair trial, the decision has already been made, guilty by just the name alone. However, I believe G-d will prevail regardless of what humans do.

NuritGn

The UN is a lost case for evil causes – Israel, BAN it already, you are fighting the windmills

Jacqueline

America stop funding and throw them out of New York

geoff

It won’t happen while Obama is in office. He’s not such a friend of Israel, is he? When he said, “Israel, I’ve got your back”, what exactly did he mean? It certainly couldn’t have meant that he would stand by it. He has just shown what a dishonest, weak and vacillating person he is by halting supplies of missiles needed by Israel. (Compare that with LBJ who really did stand by Israel.) And of course, there were those “red lines” about Syria’s use of chemical weapons – what happened to those lines? He is surely the worst president since Carter. he has weakened his own country and its allies, the west It really looks as if he supports Hamas.

Michael Garfinkel

The U.N. has outlived its purpose, and has become a sewer.

The United States, which appears to be, as Lincoln said, the last best hope of earth, should withdraw from the organization.

The absence of the U.S. will finish the U.N., which would be a welcome relief to all people of good will.

If that is not to be, expect more of the same unrelenting hypocricy and anti-semitism.